Ransomware Readiness & Protection

A structured ransomware readiness assessment - aligned with NIST SP 800-82 and the CISA Ransomware Readiness Assessment (RRA) framework - evaluates your security controls, backup strategies, incident response capabilities, and employee awareness against known ransomware TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) from the MITRE ATT&CK framework. According to Sophos' 2024 State of Ransomware Report, 66% of organizations were hit by ransomware in the past year, yet only 35% had a tested recovery plan. Our assessment produces a quantified readiness score across 8 domains, with prioritized recommendations ranked by risk reduction impact and implementation effort.

CISA, FBI, and INTERPOL unanimously advise against paying ransoms. According to FBI IC3 data, paying the ransom funds criminal operations and does not guarantee data recovery - Verizon's 2024 DBIR found that 20% of organizations that paid never received working decryption keys. Additionally, OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) warns that payments to sanctioned entities may violate international law. Our ransomware readiness program eliminates the need to consider payment by implementing immutable backups (following the 3-2-1-1 rule), tested recovery procedures, and rapid incident response capabilities. Organizations with validated backup and recovery processes recover 80% faster than those relying on ransom payment, per Mandiant research.

Our DFIR team is available 24/7/365 with guaranteed response SLAs aligned with NIST SP 800-61 incident response guidelines. For active ransomware incidents, we begin remote triage and containment within 1 hour. On-site forensic resources can be deployed within 4-24 hours depending on location. IBM's 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report shows that ransomware breaches contained within 200 days cost $1.02 million less on average. Our response protocol includes immediate lateral movement containment, ransomware variant identification using YARA rules and threat intelligence feeds, and parallel recovery initiation from validated backups to minimize operational downtime.

Having backups is necessary but insufficient - NIST SP 800-209 and CISA explicitly warn that ransomware operators now specifically target backup infrastructure. Sophos reports that 94% of ransomware attacks attempt to compromise backups, and 57% of those attempts succeed. We assess your backup architecture against the 3-2-1-1 rule (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 offsite, 1 immutable), verify air-gapped or immutable storage configurations, validate Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), and conduct live recovery drills. Many organizations discover during our assessment that their backups are either accessible to ransomware via shared credentials, untested for months, or have RTOs that exceed business tolerance thresholds.

The initial assessment takes 2-3 weeks, following the CISA Ransomware Readiness Assessment framework and NIST CSF 2.0 maturity model. Implementation of recommendations varies by scope - typically 2-6 months for comprehensive programs. We use an agile sprint model that prioritizes quick wins delivering immediate risk reduction. According to SANS research, organizations that implement the top 5 CIS Critical Security Controls reduce ransomware risk by over 85%. Our phased approach targets these high-impact controls first: backup validation, endpoint detection, network segmentation, MFA enforcement, and email security hardening - often achieving meaningful risk reduction within the first 30 days.